by C. P. Snow
He fell silent. Then he said: ‘It may be so. But we’ve got to act as though they’re not.’
He knew that I agreed.
‘Curiously enough,’ said Luke, ‘it isn’t so easy to lose hope for the world – if there’s a chance that you’re going to die pretty soon. The moment you feel these things aren’t going to be your concern much longer, then you think how you could have made a difference.’
He said: ‘When I get over this, I shall make a difference. And if I don’t, I don’t know who can.’
He was so natural that I teased him. I inserted the name of the younger Pitt, but Luke knew no history.
He went on: ‘I’ve been lowering my sights, Lewis. I want to get us through the next twenty years without any of us dropping the bomb on each other. I think if we struggle on, day by day, centimetre by centimetre, we can just about do that. I’ve got to get the bomb produced, I’ve got to make the military understand what they can and cannot do with it, I shall have some fights on my hands, inside this place as well as outside, but I believe I can get away with it. Twenty years of peace would give us all a chance.’
He sat up against his pillows with a grin.
‘It won’t be good for my soul, will it?’
‘Why not?’
It was nerve-racking that he thought so much of the future.
‘I like power too much, I’m just discovering that. I shall like it more, when I’ve got my way for the next few years.’
He broke off: ‘No, it won’t be good for my soul, but if I do something useful, if I can win us a breathing space, what the hell does it matter about my soul?’
He had not once inquired about Martin or referred to him, except perhaps (I was not sure) when he spoke of internal enemies.
He made an attempt to ask about my affairs, but, with the compulsion of illness, came back to himself. He said, in a quiet, curiously wistful voice: ‘I once told you I had never had time for much fun. I wonder when I shall.’
A memory, not sharp, came back to me. Luke, younger than now, in the jauntiness of his health, grumbling outside a Barford window.
From his bed he frowned at me.
‘When these people told me I might die,’ he said, ‘I cursed because I was thinking of all the things I hadn’t done. If they happen to be right, which I don’t believe, I tell you, I shall go out thinking of all the fun I’ve wasted. That’s the one thought I can’t bear.’
Just for an instant his courage left him. Once again, just as outside Drawbell’s gate (the memory was sharper now) he was thinking of women, of how he was still longing to possess them, of how he felt cheated because his marriage had hemmed him in. His marriage had been a good one, he loved his children, he was getting near middle age; yet now he was craving for a woman, as though he were a virgin dying with the intolerable thought that he had missed the supreme joy, the joy greater in imagination than any realized love could ever be, as though he were Keats cursing fate because he had not had Fanny Brawne.
In those that I had seen die, the bitterest thought was what they had left undone.
And, as a matter of truth, though it was not always an easy truth to take, I had observed what others had observed before – I could not recall of those who had known more than their share of the erotic life, one who, when the end came, did not think that his time had been tolerably well spent.
34: Warm to the Touch
Martin was the last man to overplay his hand. The summer came, Sawbridge was still working in the plutonium laboratory, there was nothing new from Captain Smith. From Luke’s ward there came ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory reports; some doctors thought that it was a false alarm. Whoever was right, Martin could count on months in control. The press kept up articles on traitors, and espionage, but Barford was having a respite out of the news.
In July, Martin let us know that the first laboratory extraction of plutonium metal was ready for test. Drawbell issued invitations to the committee, as though he were trying to imitate each detail of the fiasco with the pile. The day was fixed for the 26th July, and Bevill was looking forward to it like a child,
‘I believe tomorrow is going to be what I should call a red-letter day,’ he said earnestly, as soon as he met the scientists at Barford, as though he had invented the phrase. At dinner that night, where there came Drawbell, Martin, Francis Getliffe, Mounteney, Hector Rose, Nora Luke, ten more Barford scientists and committee members, he made a long speech retracing the history of the project from what he called the ‘good old days’, a speech sentimental, nostalgic, full of nursery images, in which with the utmost sincerity he paid tribute to everyone’s good intentions, including those people whom he regarded as twisters and blackguards.
As we were standing about after dinner, Martin touched my arm. He took me to the edge of the crowd and whispered: ‘There’s no need to worry about tomorrow.’
Looking at him, I saw his mouth correct, his eyes secretive and merry. I did not need any explanation. In estrangement, it was still possible to read each other’s feelings; he had just considered mine with a kind of formal courtesy, as he would not have needed to consider a friend’s.
I was not staying with him that night, but he asked me to escape from the party for a quarter of an hour. ‘We went inside the establishment wire, and walked quickly along the sludgy paths.
In an empty room of the hot laboratory, he found me a set of rubber clothes, cloak, cowl, gloves, and goloshes, and put on his own. He took me down a passage marked DANGER. ‘Never mind that,’ said Martin. He unlocked a steel door which gave into a slit of a room, empty except for what looked like a meat-safe. Martin twiddled the combination, opened the panel, and took out a floppy bag made of some yellowish substance, rather smaller than a woman’s shopping basket. As he held the bag, one corner was weighed down, as though by a small heavy object, it might have been a lead pellet.
‘That’s plutonium,’ said Martin.
‘How much?’
‘Not much. I suppose it’s worth a few hundred thousand pounds.’
He looked at the bag with a possessive, and almost sensual glance.
I had seen collectors look like that.
‘Touch it,’ he said.
I put two fingers on the bag and astonishingly was taken into an irrelevant bliss.
Under the bag’s surface, the metal was hot to the touch – and, yes, pushing under memories, I had it, I knew why I was happy. It brought back the moment, the grass and earth hot under my hand, when Martin and Irene told me she was going to have a child; so, like Irene in the Park under the fog-wrapped lights, I had been made a present of a Proustian moment, and the touch of the metal, whose heat might otherwise have seemed sinister, levitated me to the forgotten happiness of a joyous summer night.
For once, Martin was taken unawares. He was disconcerted to see me, with my fingers on the bag, lost in an absent-minded content.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Quite,’ I said.
Next day, the demonstration was conducted as though Martin and his staff did not know whether it would work.
At the end, however, Martin would not accept the congratulations, insisting that they were due to Luke, and he took Bevill and the others to Luke’s bedside.
Hector Rose and I followed behind.
‘Are you going with them, Eliot?’ said Rose.
I was surprised by the constraint in his voice.
‘I think we’d better,’ I said.
‘As a matter of fact, I think I’ll just take a stroll round the place,’ he said.
It was so impolite, so unlike him that I did not begin to understand. Although I accompanied him, I could get no hint of the reason. Later I picked it up, and it turned out to be simple, though to me unexpected. Hector Rose happened to feel a morbid horror of cancer; he tried to avoid so much as hearing the name of the disease.
By ourselves, in Drawbell’s office, he was for him relaxed, having extricated himself from an ordeal; he let fall what
Bevill would have called one or two straws in the wind, about the future management at Barford. He and Bevill wanted to get it on a business footing: Drawbell was dead out of favour. If they made a change of superintendent, and if Luke were well, it would be difficult to sidetrack him – but none of the officials, and few of the elderly scientists, relished the idea. He had made mistakes: he talked too loud and too much: he was not their man.
Already they trusted Martin more. He was younger, he was not in the Royal Society, to give him the full job was not practical politics; but, if Luke’s health stayed uncertain, was there any device by which they could give Martin an acting command of Barford?
The luck was playing into Martin’s hand. I knew that he was ready, just as he had been ready since that night in the Stratford pub, to make the most of it. Even when he paid his tribute to Luke he had a double motive, he had one eye on his own future.
It was true that he was fair-minded, more so than most men, He would not receive more credit than he had earned. Better than anyone, he could estimate Luke’s share in the project, and he wanted it made clear.
But although what he said of Luke was truthful, he also knew that men required it. Men liked fairness: it was part of the amenities, if in Bevill’s and Rose’s world you wanted your own way.
Now Martin was coming to his last move but one.
To Drawbell’s room, Bevill and he and Drawbell himself returned from the sickbed. Mounteney and Getliffe accompanied them. Martin wanted those two on his side as well as the officials. If the opportunity did not arrive without forcing it, he was ready to wait. In fact, it came when Bevill asked about Luke’s health.
‘Is that poor chap,’ said Bevill, ‘going to get back into harness?’
‘I hope so,’ said Martin. ‘The doctors seem to think so.’
‘We just don’t know,’ said Drawbell
‘He may never come back, you mean?’ said Bevill.
‘I believe he will,’ said Martin, once more speaking out deliberately on Luke’s behalf.
‘Well,’ said Bevill to Drawbell, ‘I suppose Eliot will carry on?’
‘He’s been doing it for months,’ said Drawbell. ‘I always tell my team no one is indispensable. If any of you go there’s always a better man behind you!’
‘I suppose you can carry on, Eliot, my lad?’ said Bevill to Martin in a jollying tone.
At last Martin saw his opening.
Instead of giving a junior’s yes, he stared down at his hand, and then, after a pause, suddenly looked straight at Bevill with sharp, frowning eyes.
‘There is a difficulty,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether this is the time to raise it.’
Drawbell bobbed and smiled. Now that the young man had grown up, he was having to struggle for his say.
‘I don’t see the difficulty,’ said Bevill. ‘You’ve been doing splendidly, why, you’ve been delivering the goods.’
‘It would ease my mind,’ said Martin, ‘if I could explain a little what I mean.’
Bevill said, ‘That’s what we’re here for.’
Martin said: ‘Well, sir, anyone who is asked to take responsibility for this project is taking responsibility for a good deal more. I think it may be unreasonable to ask him, if he can’t persuade his colleagues that we’re shutting our eyes to trouble.’
Bevill said: ‘The water is getting a bit deep for me.’
Martin asked a question: ‘Does anyone believe we can leave the Sawbridge question where it is?’
‘I see,’ said Bevill.
In fact, the old man had seen minutes before. He was playing stupid to help Martin on.
‘I am sorry to press this,’ said Martin, ‘but I couldn’t let myself be responsible for another Sawbridge.’
‘God forbid,’ said Bevill.
‘Is there any evidence of another?’ said Getliffe.
‘None that I know of,’ said Martin. He was speaking as though determined not to overstate his case. ‘But if we can’t touch this man, it seems to me not impossible that we should have someone follow suit before we’re through.’
‘It’s not impossible.’ Francis Getliffe had to give him the point.
‘It’s not exactly our fault that we haven’t touched your present colleague,’ said Rose.
‘I have a view on that,’ said Martin quietly.
‘We want to hear,’ said Bevill, still keeping the court for Martin.
‘Everything I say here is privileged?’
‘Within these four walls,’ the old man replied.
‘I think there’s a chance that Sawbridge can be broken down,’ said Martin.
‘Captain Hook has tried long enough.’
‘That’s true,’ said Martin, ‘but I think there’s a chance.’
‘How do you see it happening?’
‘It could only be done by someone who knows him.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m ready to try,’ said Martin.
Martin, in the same tone, went on to state his terms. If Sawbridge stayed at large in the project, it was not reasonable to ask Martin, feeling as he did, to take the responsibility. If he were to take it, he needed sanction to join Captain Smith and try to settle ‘the Sawbridge question’ for good and all.
Bevill was enthusiastically in favour; Rose thought it a fair proposal. ‘We want two things,’ said Rose. ‘The first is safety, and the second is as little publicity as we can humanly manage. We should be eternally grateful, my dear Eliot,’ (he was speaking to Martin) ‘if only you could keep us out of the papers.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ said Martin.
‘You mean, there’ll be another trial?’ said Getliffe.
‘It’s necessary,’ said Martin.
Martin had counted on support front Bevill and Rose; he had also set himself to get acquiescence from the scientists. Suddenly he got more than acquiescence, he got wholehearted support where one would have looked for it last. It came from Mounteney. It happened that Mounteney possessed, as well as his scientific ideals, a passionate sense of a man’s pledged word. He forgot about national secrecy (which he loathed) and communism (which in principle he approved of) in his horror that a man like Sawbridge could sign the undertaking of secrecy and then break it. In his pure unpadded integrity Mounteney saw nothing but the monstrosity of breaking one’s oath, and, like Thomas Bevill whom he resembled in no other conceivable fashion, he cried out: ‘I should shoot them! The sooner we shoot them the better!’
In that instant I understood at last the mystery of Mounteney’s surrender before the bomb was dropped, the reason his protest fizzled out.
It was Francis Getliffe who took longest to come round.
‘I should have thought it was enough,’ he said, ‘for you to give Smith all the information you can. I don’t see why you should get involved further than that.’
‘I’m afraid that I must,’ said Martin patiently.
‘There are a great many disadvantages, and no advantages to put against them, in scientists becoming mixed up in police work, even now.’
‘From a long-term view, I think that’s right,’ said Martin.
‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe.
‘But,’ said Martin, ‘there are times when one can’t think of the long term, and I suggest this is one.’
‘Why?’
‘Because otherwise no one will make this man confess.’
‘It isn’t proved that you can make the difference.’
‘No,’ Martin replied. ‘I may fail. But I suggest that is not a reason for stopping me.’
At last Francis shook his head, unwittingly assenting, and said: ‘We’ve gone so far, someone was bound to go the whole distance.’ He, who carried so much authority, sounded for once indecisive: as though the things he and others had been forced to do had prepared the way for younger, harder men.
Then Martin put in his last word that afternoon: ‘I think, before we settle it, that I ought to mention Luke and I have not been in complete agr
eement on this problem.’
‘That’s appreciated,’ said Hector Rose.
Martin spoke as fairly, as firmly, as when he had been giving the credit to Luke.
‘I proposed easing Sawbridge out last summer,’ he remarked. ‘I felt sufficiently strongly about it to put it on the file.’
‘I take it,’ asked Rose, ‘that Luke resisted?’
‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk,’ said Bevill. ‘Now you put us straight.
35: The Brilliance of Suspicion
The day after Martin’s piece of persuasion I did what, at any previous time, I should not have thought twice about. Now I did it deliberately. It was a little thing: I invited Kurt Puchwein to dinner.
As a result, I was snubbed. I received by return a letter in Puchwein’s flowing Teutonic script:
‘My friend, that is what I should have called you when Roy Calvert brought us together ten years ago. I realize that in volunteering to be seen with me again you were taking a risk: I am unwilling to be the source of risk to anyone while there is a shred of friendship left. In the life that you and your colleagues are now leading, it is too dangerous to have friends.’
The letter ended:
‘You can do one last thing for me which I hope is neither dangerous for yourself, nor, like your invitation, misplaced charity. Please, if you should see Hanna, put in a word for me. The divorce is going through, but there is still time for her to come back.’
Within a few hours Hanna herself rang up, as though by a complete coincidence, for so far as I knew she had not been near her husband for months. It was the same message as at Barford on New Year’s Day – could she speak to me urgently? I hesitated; caution, suspiciousness, nagged at me – and resentment of my brother. I had to tell myself that, if I could not afford to behave openly, few men could.
In my new flat Hanna sat on the sofa, the sun, on the summer evening still high over Hyde Park, falling across her but leaving her from the shoulders up in shadow. Dazzled, I could still see her eyes snapping, as angrily she asked me: ‘Won’t you stop Martin doing this beastly job?’
